Summary：Global warming’s effects on populations

In last two months I was helping TaiwanWatch translating this article below

Climate Change, Coming Home: Global warming’s effects on populations

Despite of my poor English and even poor Chinese, I just squeezed out a draft for them.


After so many reviews of it, I think I can give some summaries

• It talks about climate change effects on Food, Diseases, Weather extremes and Sea levels
• About Food
• Warmer climate will impact the agriculture in tropical and sub-tropical area
• Failure of crop will lead to more hungry and malnutrition, which are already problems.
• About Diseases
• Climate change has influences mostly on vector-borne diseases, such as malaria, dengue fever, diarrhea and Lyme.
• Deficient public health system is to blame for  outbreaks of diseases
• Extreme weather event can crash the public health system, as the flood which inundated Mozambique in 2000
• About Weather extremes
• 2005 Hurricane Katrina , 2003 European Heat Wave , 2000 Flood in Mozambique
• There is still no direct link between climate change and these extreme events, but researches have shown that rest assured warmer climate increases the possibility of weather extremes.
• About sea levels
• Are rising
• Small low-lying Pacific island nations will most likely be doomed (and I don't think Taiwan has any better chance)
• Kaya identity : The reason why everybody is developing efficient and clean energy
• F = P*g*e*f
• Roughly speaking, they are 
• F : CO2 emissions
• P : Population
• g : Personal wealth
• e : Energy consumption for wealth
• f : CO2 emissions for energy consumption
• By reducing any of the 4 inputs we can decrease the total CO2 emissions.
• We can not reduce population, it's immoral if you know what I mean.
• It's also difficult, if not impossible, to expect people not to pursue personal wealth.
• So we just had to focus on the rest 2 inputs: e and f , which imply efficient and clean energy
• And the most important point, in my view, the author was trying to express here, is that always the poorer countries get screwed by what we have done to the planet. I shall quote from The Story of Cap & Trade  "It's like we had a big party, didn't invite our neighbors and stuck them with the clean up bill"

中文摘要：

• 本文談的是氣候變遷對食物、疾病、極端天氣和海平面的影響。
• 關於食物
• 氣候暖化會對熱帶和亞熱帶地區造成嚴重影響。
• 氣候暖化對農作的損害會造成飢荒和營養不良，這兩個早就是大問題了。
• 關於疾病
• 氣候變遷影響的大多是病媒傳染病，例如瘧疾、登革熱、痢疾、和萊姆關節炎。
• 不完善的公共衛生系統才是傳染病暴發的元兇。
• 極端天氣型態會損害公共衛生系統，例如2000年莫三比克的洪水
• 關於極端天氣
• 2005年卡崔娜颶風 , 2003年歐洲熱浪 , 2000年莫三比克洪水
• 還沒有證據證明氣候變遷和這些極端天氣型態的出現有直接關聯，但許多研究已指出氣候暖化會提高這些極端天氣型態的發生率。
• 關於海平面
• 當然在上升
• 太平洋那些低海拔的小島國家應該會先被淹掉。(台灣大概也好不到哪去)
• 卡雅(Kaya)恆等式(這東西就是為什麼大家都在發展乾淨有效率能源的原因)

• F = P*g*e*f
• 大致來說這些參數的意義是 
• F : 總二氧化碳排放量
• P : 總人口
• g : 個人財富
• e : 追求單位個人財富所需能源
• f : 消耗每單位能源所排放的二氧化碳
• 減少等式右邊4個參數中任何一個都能降低二氧化碳排放。
• 就道德層面上我們不能減少人口，如果你知道我在講什麼。
• 我們也不太可能叫人們不要追求個人財富。
• 這樣一來我們只好對付剩下兩個參數：e和f；也就是乾淨和更有效率的能源。
• 最後這整篇作者想要強調的重點(我認為啦)：我們對這個星球做的一些狗屁倒灶的事，最後倒楣的都是那些窮困國家。套一句碳交易的故事裏面所講的話：「這就好像我們在家裡開派對，不但沒有邀請鄰居，還把清潔費用帳單丟給他們。」